84 THE DESCENT OF MAN. 



independently of the will, and thus creates brilliant and 

 novel results. A poet, as Jean Paul Eichter remarks,* 

 " who must reflect whether he shall make a character say 

 yes or no to the devil with him ; he is only a stupid 

 corpse." Dreaming gives us the best notion of this power; 

 as Jean Paul again says, " The dream is an involuntary art 

 of poetry/' The value of the products of our imagination 

 depends of course on the number, accuracy, and clearness 

 of our impressions, on our judgment and taste in selecting 

 or rejecting the involuntary combinations, and to a certain 

 extent on our power of voluntarily combining them. As 

 dogs, cats, horses, and probably all the higher animals, 

 even birds f have vivid dreams, and this is shown by their 

 movements and the sounds uttered, we must admit that 

 they possess some power of imagination. There must x be 

 something special which causes dogs to howl in the night, 

 and especially during moonlight, in that remarkable and 

 melancholy manner called baying. All dogs do not do so; 

 and, according to Houzeau, J they do not then look at the 

 moon, but at some fixed point near the horizon. Houzeau 

 thinks that their imaginations are disturbed by the vague 

 outlines of the surrounding objects, and conjure up before 

 them fantastic images ; if this be so, their feelings may 

 almost be called superstitious. 



Of all the faculties of the human mind, it will, I pre- 

 sume, be admitted that Reason stands at the summit. Only 

 a few persons now dispute that animals possess some power 

 of reasoning. Animals may constantly be seen to pause, 

 deliberate, and resolve.. It is a significant fact, that the 

 more the habits of any particular animal are studied by a 

 naturalist, the more he attributes to reason and the less^ to 

 unlearned instincts. In future chapters we shall see that 

 some animals extremely low in the scale apparently display 



* Quoted in Dr. Maudsley's " Physiology and Pathology of Mind," 

 1868, pp. 19, 220. 



fDr. Jerdon, "Birds of India," vol. i, 1862, p. 21. Houzeau says 

 that his paroquets and canary birds dreamed: " Facultes Mentales," 

 torn, ii, p. 136. 



| "Facultes Mentales des Animaux," 1872, torn, ii, p. 181. 



Mr. L. H. Morgan's work on "The American Beaver," 1866, 

 offers a good illustration of this remark. I cannot help thinking, 

 however, that he goes too far in underrating the power of instinct. 



